


New Rules

by Firelight_and_Rain



Category: Metal Gear
Genre: (p0rn happens in the second chapter), BDSM, Bad BDSM Etiquette, M/M, PWP, it's metal gear, look - Freeform, they're all idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2018-08-27
Packaged: 2019-07-03 09:18:29
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15815982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Firelight_and_Rain/pseuds/Firelight_and_Rain
Summary: Ocelot did have to try something to get Kaz's mind off Snake, didn't he?





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Some background Quiet/V, Ocelot getting some mileage out of his Shalashaska personality, and I don't want to clutter the tags because I'm not very confident when it comes to writing smut but you want to know the filth here OK here's the filth involved:
> 
> *Shibari  
> *D/S stuff  
> *Breathplay  
> *Anal sex
> 
> This isn't in the same continuity as When the Wolf's Away although I think it's a pretty similar story, and yeah, the title is in reference to the Dua Lipa song.

Kaz started noticing something was up when Quiet started harassing him.

Diamond Dogs was going through a dry spell, and Kaz was grateful for the opportunity to catch up on his paperwork; Snake seemed happy with whatever it was that kept him out in the desert most days, although he didn’t share whatever it was; only Ocelot seemed restless for work, turning his attention to the strike teams he had most dominion over. They didn’t seem to mind. If they did, they didn’t come crying to Kaz about it. If Ocelot had turned his claws on Kaz (which, in relative isolation from the man, Kaz could admit he didn’t do all that often) they’d have found that Kaz was also increasingly restless, miserable on the horizon, channeling that energy into the endless administrative tasks Snake had no interest in and Ocelot often evaded. But they didn’t.

Quiet rose to the occasion, though.

Kaz would have preferred Ocelot.

Kaz was holed up in command center about noon when he became vaguely aware that someone else was in the room with him. Assuming, based on the visitor’s silence, that it was Ocelot, he held out his hand and did the vague wave that was his request for coffee. Presumed Ocelot set a mug on his hand. Distracted enough by the numbers in front of him, Kaz inhaled half a mouthful of spoiled milk before he realized what had happened and spun in his chair to throw the mug at Ocelot.

Quiet smirked at him from where she was perched on a bank of consoles, pressing who knew what buttons. As futile as it was, Kaz cocked his arm and threw the mug end-over-end.

She disappeared in a plume of smoke. The mug crashed to the floor and shattered.

(The mug had already had a spiderweb of superglue going through it, from where it had been thrown at Ocelot and Snake had repaired it).

Kaz stared at the mess for a moment before turning back to his numbers.

Later he wondered what Quiet had been doing there in the first place - there’d never been any love lost between them, but she seemed to prefer to deal with him by pretending he didn’t exist, a method he had to agree with. If she was bored she’d be looking for attention from Snake, right? So why wasn’t she with Snake?

*

Kaz checked everybody’s schedule. Snake didn’t have one, and neither did Ocelot unless he scribbled it down on the charts himself, but the troops had ended up with, or scheduled, a regular chunk of free time and if they were doing anything against regulations he doubted they’d have left such an obvious paper trail.

*

Of course, he could always just ask Snake.

“Boss, you there?”

Kaz could hear wind whistling in the background over the connection. 

“What is it?” Snake asked.

“I’ve noticed that the men have been scheduling downtime together for something I haven’t implemented. Did you write something in?”

“Yes.” Snake didn’t sound regretful about having left Kaz out of the loop. Snake never sounded regretful about anything. Sometimes he sounded sad, and Kaz was proud that he could count himself one of the few people to have seen Snake’s moments of weakness, but not regretful. “It was Ocelot’s idea. You should talk to him about his plans for it.”

Kaz sighed in annoyance into the line. “If it’s anything like I think it is, I’m not sure I’ll be any help, Boss.”

Snake gave a rumbling sort of chuckle at that, as if Kaz had said something self-deprecating and senseless. Coming from anyone else Kaz would have been deeply offended, and would have let them know that. “It wasn’t a suggestion, Kaz.”

Kaz just hoped that showing up unannounced would throw Ocelot off whatever game he was playing.

He told Snake some stories of what the younger recruits got up to. Snake told him about a small drama between a fox and a hare that he’d overseen; the fox tumbling the hare out of a bundle of brush, a dash across some scorched bit of land, the brush ground into the dirt by a passing convoy. Both disappearing into the shimmer of light through low dust, the broad brushstrokes of the desert air, before Snake could decide on the winner. No serpents this time. It was a good conversation for what it was, which wasn’t much.

*

Kaz showed up at the Unofficial Recreational Activity one of the few times that Snake himself was present.

He tried to school his expression away from a petulant frown when it became clear that the Unofficial Recreational Activity was just more CQC. At that moment Ocelot was getting his ass handed to him by Snake.

Kaz propped up the wall at the edges of the assembled crowd, ignoring the alarmed whispers about Master Miller that propagated away from him like ripples in a still pond. It took a skill like sniping to find a clear window of sight in to Snake and Ocelot’s match. He got up from the wall and made his way closer, tapping at people with his crutch when they didn’t notice him to move out of the way quick enough, backing it up with a desultory glare in promise of future retribution. He didn’t really care and he wouldn’t bother to remember individual faces.

Snake had Ocelot in a headlock and most of the soldiers were cheering for Snake, but to Kaz’s surprise some small faction of them were cheering for Ocelot, too. Snake didn’t seem bothered. Ocelot was wearing an abstracted grimace but when Kaz’s feet came into his field of view a sardonic expression crossed his face very briefly and he tapped out. Snake moved off; Ocelot smirked and threw him back down again. Kaz rolled his eyes and stepped back.

Who knew how long they’d be about this.

Snake probably didn’t even know. Oh, Snake wasn’t as dense as Kaz had thought a long long long (it wasn’t that long - but it felt that long) time ago, he had his ways. And he was his ways, which brought with it some massive blind spots. Military men, in general. Granted. Kaz knew he was projecting, but wouldn’t anyone?

Snake won again. Ocelot didn’t seem to mind.

Ocelot let the match end at that.

“And that,” Snake said, “is why you need to know what do with a downed opponent once you’ve got them. You never know what a desperate foe might do.”

“Like pull the pin out of a grenade,” Ocelot said, “if they’re determined enough that surrender would be an affront to their honor.”

Kaz glared daggers at Ocelot. Ocelot blithely ignored him. Kaz’s ill temper around Ocelot was a constant. No one who hadn’t already heard that particular story would suspect anything.

“Did anybody ever try that?” one of the soldiers asked. Kaz imagined that Ocelot was starting to look a little smug.

“Yes,” Snake said. “Hope no one you fight does. It’s more important to survive the fight than it is to get out of it better than you got in.” Was it? Why were they here if it was? But maybe if a nation could only have so many figureheads, it could only have so many idealists. Snake only met Kaz’s eyes for a moment. Kaz wasn’t hopeful for more. Then he shook Ocelot affectionately by the shoulder. “You’ve fought beside this polecat long enough, you should know to be careful of other weapons than guns.”

“Hey now,” Ocelot drawled. “I’d never bring a knife to a gunfight, you know that.”

“You would if you had to,” Snake said.

Ocelot shrugged. “And that,” Ocelot said, returning his attention to the rest of them, “is why you need to learn what to do with a captured opponent when you have the time and the back-up to bring them in.”

Ocelot volunteered as Snake’s victim, but someone pointed out that Snake had a bit of (more than a bit of) an unfair advantage and how to subdue someone if you weren’t significantly larger than them, which created the implicit problem of finding someone larger than Snake; before Kaz felt the need to step in, everyone went frostily quiet. Kaz knew it had something to do with Quiet when Ocelot started smirking to himself.

“I’ll let her take me,” Snake said, staring at her where she’d materialized a couple yards from him. “I can get out again, but it should be educational.”

Kaz scoffed. “Educational. That’s a word for it.”

Ocelot looked between them, and said, “It might be useful for some of the men to see a match between mere mortals while that’s going on.”

The first defense that came to Kaz’s mind was that it was questionable whether Ocelot counted for that, but even should he clarify that to mean Ocelot was a demon from hell he’d still take it as a compliment, and for good reason. So he snapped at the newest recruit he saw, pointed at Ocelot, and left.

Snake hadn’t managed to escape from Quiet. Some of the cheers were getting bawdy.

Kaz sort of hated his job, sometimes. (Most times. But that was life).

*

“You can’t keep up the legend of Master Miller like this, you know,” Ocelot said cheerily. They were back in Command. Kaz was sure that Ocelot had left a note earlier saying that he’d be busy during this time slot, but maybe that was an excuse to keep his time free from other people to come and harass Kaz.

“You know why people fight for us?”

“They fight for the Boss.”

“People fight for the money. You know, I don’t think the Boss even knows where half of our accounts are. So I’m plenty scary, for people who have family to support or a retirement in mind.”

“Do you?” Ocelot asked. The zip of a match on a matchbox. The smell of smoke. Kaz’s fingers twitched. He wanted a cigarette, but this conversation was already too vulnerable for him.

“Family? No.” None living, anyway. Not that he’d tell Ocelot if he did. He wasn’t particularly scared of dying anymore, himself, which was helpful for maintaining something of a professional relationship with Shalashaska. And the Boss? When it came to that, him, he was far more scared of admitting what he might have lost to himself than he was of admitting that vulnerability to Ocelot. They both knew. Whatever Ocelot’s plans might be for the Boss, they wouldn’t be changed by Kaz.

“Retirement?”

Kaz shrugged. “Maybe someday. I won’t leave the Diamond Dogs, though.” Family, retirement. That’s what this company bought him, wasn’t it? He could have left the life and done about anything he wanted in his younger days. Nowadays he wasn’t so sure.

“Glad to hear it,” Ocelot said, “although something makes me think that this won’t be the end of the line for the Boss.”

Kaz suspected that the word ‘retirement’ meant absolutely nothing to Ocelot. Maybe it didn’t mean anything to Snake, either. In that moment he almost wanted Snake to knock up Quiet and them to settle down somewhere just so Ocelot wouldn’t keep getting what he wanted from Snake.

But Kaz would be the babysitter, wouldn’t he.

Ocelot handed him a cigarette. He took it.

“Of course,” Ocelot said, “Quiet might be a complication.”

“I thought you were the one trying to keep that liability on Mother Base.”

Ocelot sighed dramatically. “She’s not Cipher, Miller. That’s my department, anyway.” Kaz tapped at his logbooks. He knew Ocelot had meant espionage was his department, not that he was Cipher; or he wanted to know that, even while he wanted it to be him and Snake against the world again, because they needed Ocelot. They certainly didn’t need to deal with an Ocelot who wasn’t on their side. “But everyone gets lonely sometimes.” Ocelot set his boots up on a nearby console and gave Kaz a cloyingly sincere look.

“Snake doesn’t,” Kaz insisted. “I’m sure you would know if he did.”

Ocelot’s eyebrows rose at this last volley, turned more against against himself than Ocelot. “Actually, no, I wouldn’t,” he offered.

Maybe Kaz wasn’t fun when he wasn’t fighting.

Kaz was hopeful that Ocelot was going to leave, out of boredom if nothing else, but he didn’t, and after the silence stretched out uncomfortably for a few beats Ocelot said, “Look, either talk to Snake about it or find some other way out of your current funk.”

“My funk is none of your business.”

“Like hell.”

*

Kaz found his entire schedule gone one day. A small, glossy picture of an ocelot was stuck in the folder instead. Some souvenir someone had snapped in the field. One guess who. He stuck the picture in a pocket, fast in the hope that no one would see it, and ignored it until command was otherwise abandoned. Then he made his way towards the brig.

On his arrival Ocelot looked up from a Louis L’Amour book, set it down on one of the benches by the cells and waved them both out. Quiet was reclining in the largest cell with a book held over her face.

“Did you really think trashing my schedule would be a setback for me?” Kaz asked, baffled.

Ocelot crossed his arms and shrugged. “I told you you needed to get your mind off your work; and Snake.” And therefore Snake, given how Kaz best liked to make himself useful.

“I don’t have a schedule. I set my own schedule. But this screwed with my ability to help Snake in the field so …” Kaz realized he was about to say ‘please’. To Ocelot. Like hell. “Give it back.”

Snake had better things to do than re-arrange his own missions for Kaz’s availability. And if Kaz had to ask, Snake might know that something was up, and Kaz did not want to have that conversation.

“Alright,” Ocelot agreed. “Let’s call it the stakes on that match you cheated me out of.”

Kaz gave the fakest laugh he could. “Uh, no. If you won’t give it back.” He thought about it. He couldn’t really push, because he didn’t and had never had leverage over Ocelot. He paid Ocelot, technically, but Ocelot seemed not to notice; he’d never asked for a raise or a bonus, and when Kaz got on his case for disappearing without warning as he sometimes did Ocelot had just stared blankly and shrugged at the lack of a paycheck. “I’ll assign you to some really boring supply chain missions.”

As expected, Ocelot shrugged at him. “Come now, Miller. You know I don’t really work for you. And you’ve been spending so much time in Command that I thought it wouldn’t be too much trouble to just make a new schedule if you were so set against having a little chat with me.”

“Why are you so damned set on it?”

“You wouldn’t believe me if I said I’m concerned? As a friend?”

Ocelot didn’t have friends. “No.” Maybe Kaz didn’t -

“You’d believe that I’m bored, though.”

Of course he would.

“So I’m not going to drop this until you fight me.”

Kaz did kind of want to fight him.


	2. Chapter 2

It was late enough that the training rooms were deserted. Ocelot was in a good mood, spinning a flashlight between his hands and whistling the theme song to some Spaghetti Western Kaz could remember nothing of but a very vague memory of listening to it somewhere somewhen in a more innocent world. Kaz locked the door to the training room they’d chosen at random behind them out of the suspicion that he’d end up looking less dignified than he’d like. And locking himself in a room with Shalashaska was a damn stupid idea, he could and would admit, but in for a penny, in for a pound.

“It wasn’t my decision to spar with Snake, myself,” Ocelot said, dragging out a mat. “I’m still not convinced it was a good idea for them to see me lose. I understand your reticence on that front.”

“Then why did you ask me to get in the same -?”

“A little vulnerability can be useful for convincing people to trust you.”

“Except, not you.”

“If you’re so insistent. You might as well help me with something.”

“No.”

Ocelot started removing a pile of rope from a duffel bag that had been in the room before they’d come in. Kaz felt adrenaline start to wash away the stiff feeling of having sat in more or less one place the entire day.

Ocelot rolled his eyes. “You don’t trust me. I get that. But you don’t want me getting complacent, either, and like it or not we can’t trust anyone but each other.”

“I don’t trust you.”

“For a certain value of trust. Miller, I’m not actually proposing anything you don’t want to do; Snake’s not available and I don’t want to ask anyone else to put me in a compromising position.”

“You’re not worried about losing trade secrets?”

Ocelot ignored that. “Consider it physical therapy.” He smiled tightly and approached to help Kaz out of his coat, folding it once to set it on a nearby crate. Then he helped them both down to sit on the mat. He turned his back on Kaz, who considered making a joke about sitting up braiding each other’s hair but found it an impulse much easier to resist without the armor of his coat, and with Ocelot’s mirrored vulnerability. ‘A little vulnerability can be useful’. But it wasn’t a new tactic since they’d got Boss back and Ocelot had started faking civility. He held rope - made out of black silk, and was this coming out of company resources? - loosely around his own wrists.

He talked Kaz through a series of complicated knots, humming in dissatisfaction whenever Kaz failed to yank hard enough, not saying anything about Kaz planting his knee in Ocelot’s hip to steady himself. Done, he slipped two fingers between the mess of rope and yanked Ocelot over.

“Alright,” Kaz said. “Get out of that.”

Ocelot rolled himself over to raise an eyebrow at Kaz. He bent himself nearly in half and then sat up, slipping the rope off his arms.

Kaz frowned and then made a come-hither gesture.

“I changed my mind,” Ocelot said. “Let’s do you next.” He leaned forward into Kaz’s space, setting his hand over Kaz’s ankle.

“Like hell,” Kaz said, “you changed your mind.”

Ocelot closed his hand and pulled. Kaz caught himself on his elbow but didn’t have any traction on the slick plastic of the mat. Ocelot had his hands braced to either side of Kaz’s hips and smiled. It almost felt genuine for how thin it was, just a gentle upwards curve. “You know you won’t be satisfied with yourself until you’ve fought just as hard as you can.”

“I’ve volunteered -”

“And because neither you nor Snake believe you’re ready, might ever be ready, for the field, you’ve started taking it out on yourself. Take it out on someone else for a change.”

Kaz let himself fall back in order to take a swing at Ocelot. Ocelot caught the swing easily and used his own momentum to flip him over. Kaz went with it until he judged the moment and managed to bash Ocelot in the face with his elbow, and kicked at Ocelot’s knee, half making contact. But it was only a moment before Ocelot had him face-down on the mat, arm bent behind him.

“That was fun,” Kaz said sarcastically.

“You wouldn’t have gone along with it if I weren’t fighting back,” Ocelot said. “But that wasn’t so terrible.”

Kaz strained against Ocelot’s hold. Ocelot kept him in place, but he tightened like a coil; this was in itself a satisfaction. And, no, Kaz wasn’t still sleepwalking through his grief over Snake deep enough not to know exactly what was happening. Or could be happening, dependent on him.

Kaz went limp. Ocelot waited, on the chance that Kaz was trying to trick him. (If Kaz had been, it would have ended the same, but Ocelot was patient; he wouldn’t have minded). Ocelot’s breath gusted over the back of Kaz’s neck. The warmth of his body along Kaz’s back invaded him, seeping in between sore muscles and the hollow feeling he carried around with him. It was no longer a tactical decision to melt down to the mat.

“Something on your mind, Miller?”

“Mm. What do you think.”

Ocelot kissed Kaz on the side of the neck. Kaz turned his head to give Ocelot better access; but Ocelot didn’t take advantage. “If you just wanted to fool around you could have said so.”

“And deprive you of the chance to show off?”

“I’m not done yet. Because, Miller, if you just wanted someone to suck you off you could have found a half-dozen takers within the ranks.”

“Still sounds pretty good to me.”

“No, here’s what I think we’re going to do. You’re going to get that tension out of your system about thinking you can’t do anything anymore by taking the night off at my hands. You can fight me if you want. And I get to practice my restraint techniques.” Ocelot pressed his nose into the soft skin below Kaz’s ear. “Sound good?”

Kaz’s heart-rate was higher than it had been - since his last panic attack, really, but even as long as it had been since he’d slept with anyone (with Snake’s shadow everywhere -), his body still knew what to do with this kind of adrenaline. He bit his lip trying not to breathe too loudly, curling his hand into a fist. His own body heat reflecting up into him from the plastic. No point in keeping his cool to keep some sort of facade up for his own goddamn spymaster, but he wanted the space to make his decision before Ocelot really started pressing his attack.

It didn’t take him long to make his decision. They had privacy; it didn’t need to mean anything; he didn’t want to only want to be left alone anymore. 

“Well? Are you going to let me do all the work?” Kaz asked.

Ocelot gave his flat little laugh right into Kaz’s skin and licked up his neck to nip at his ear. He sat up and slid off Kaz’s back, and started unbuttoning Kaz’s shirt when Kaz had sat up; Kaz interrupted him by grabbing the front of his shirt and biting his lower lip. Well, tried to interrupt him. Ocelot had no trouble undoing buttons with his free hand balled up in Kaz’s hair and his tongue in Kaz’s mouth. In another moment Ocelot pushed them flat, Kaz’s back to the mat and his wrist pinned beside his head, Ocelot’s leg locked around Kaz’s, pressing his erection into Kaz’s hip.

Kaz was alright with this, rocking up into the space that Ocelot allowed him with the rhythm of their bodies, with the thought that maybe Ocelot’d get distracted from whatever fantasy he had in mind. But when his breathing started getting shallow, Ocelot sat up and disentangled them (although he remained sitting in Kaz’s lap, with his wrist under his hand).

“I’m not going to ask you if you trust me,” Ocelot said, running a thumb along Kaz’s lower lip. Kaz tried to bite at it, and Ocelot pushed his head back against the mat with his palm against the underside of his jaw. “We both know you don’t. But if you can trust me for just a little bit, then you can fight me all you like.”

“Why not fight you now? It doesn’t look like it’d make much difference.”

Ocelot loosened his ever-present scarf and had it around Kaz’s neck in a moment, just a suggestion of pressure. Kaz brought his hand over one of Ocelot’s, trying to communicate that he got it, did he ever get how vulnerable he was, when Ocelot snapped the scarf tighter. “No, it really wouldn’t,” Ocelot purred, scanning Kaz’s expression as Kaz thought of what the fuck to say and rapidly found that he didn’t have the breath to say any of it, heel digging into the mat hard enough to feel the concrete underneath. Why hadn’t he said ‘no’? The thing was, he didn’t want Ocelot to listen to him. Ocelot had agreed to stand in for something he could fight and claw at, after all.

When he started clawing at Ocelot’s nearest wrist, Ocelot transferred the scarf to one hand and brought the offending hand back to the mat.

“But,” Ocelot said, “you’re safer if you don’t fight me.” He let go of Kaz’s hand and re-adjusted the scarf. “See? It’s better if someone else is in control for a little while.”

Then he released the scarf and ran a hand over Kaz’s throat under the scarf. Kaz gasped and coughed as his vision returned to full color. “Fuck you.”

“Some other time, Miller. Also we’re going to have to think of something better than that.”

Kaz coughed again. “I absolutely know you know where to stick your dick, Ocelot.”

Ocelot scoffed. “I’m really going to have to do something about your standards.” He toyed with the collar of Kaz’s shirt, eyes where some very vivid bruises were going to form on his neck. “No, I’m not just doing this for you, but we’re going to need some way for you to cuss me out all you want and still mean something when something’s about to ruin the night.”

“I knew what I was doing when I agreed to meet with you in a deserted room in the middle of the night, Shalashaska.”

Ocelot quirked an eyebrow and smiled thinly. “Aw, you know, I never cared much for that nickname, but from you. Let’s go with.” Ocelot considered. “Argentina.”

Kaz shrugged as much as he could.

When Ocelot got off him, Kaz sat up and rubbed at his neck. Ocelot gave him a slightly warning look, but let it be, and got more rope from his duffel.

“Shibari?” Kaz asked in some surprise.

“Yes, actually,” Ocelot said. “Although I’m surprised you’d consider sex to be art.” He considered this for a moment. “Unless you were making a pitch.”

“Hey, girls’re into it. I’ve never actually -”

“Yeah. It doesn’t seem like the Boss’s style.”

“And you?”

Ocelot correctly guessed that he was asking the one safe question on the table, the one about art. Although when it came to Ocelot and culture, who knew what answer you’d get. “Yes. All violence is art. All violence I do, anyway.”

“I’m absolutely wearing a scarf tomorrow.”

“Probably wise. Mind if I keep a memento?”

Ocelot had set a cassette recorder on one of the crates.

“Are you insane?”

“It’s been mentioned.”

Kaz was flushed red all over, and tried to school his face into a pout. “I - you’re going to share it with Snake, aren’t you?”

“I could. I could keep it for me. Or just.” He shrugged. “Try to remember, I have a good memory.”

Some possessive sentiment came over Kaz. “Sure. But it’s just between us, unless you really need to make Snake jealous someday.” Which should be safe, since that day’d come and gone for both of them. (Maybe it hadn’t gone yet for Kaz, but Ocelot was insistent that he was a professional).

Ocelot brightened a little and pressed something on the machine. The click was audible and sharp in the near empty room, and seemed an extension of Ocelot, how he was filling up the room in the absence of anything else; the rest of the time, he put so much effort into being the quiet one between himself, Kaz and the Boss and it worked. Kaz was edging from bored into annoyed by the time Ocelot returned to him and sat in his lap, warming him up with more thorough kissing. (He wrapped his scarf around his neck again, but while he pulled Kaz up into him with it, he kept the pressure the safe side of snug).

Kaz was pushed onto his back, again, but thought better of commenting on it when Ocelot went for his boots and then his pants with what had to be record efficiency. Good thing, for all of this, that rough handling wasn’t a turn-off.

“What, you’re not undressing?”

“Do you want me to?”

Kaz shrugged and turned a little red again.

Ocelot run his thumb over Kaz’s lips again and turned him over, running a hand up the valley of his spine and into the hair at the base of his skull, not rough enough to be meant to keep him in place. Kaz didn’t close his eyes, he was too keyed up for that, but the low lights and his limited field of vision were good enough. Ocelot put his arm behind his back and bound it there with a complicated series of knots, the anchoring loops covering his entire ribcage and shoulders. Kaz inhaled as deep as he could. He could breath perfectly well, not that he was too worried about that - he’d have taken more issue with Ocelot’s demonstration with the scarf if a little bit of not being able to breath was a deal-breaker - but on the exhale he could feel his skin dent just slightly.

That was fine.

It was like being held.

Odd that his sense of self-preservation threw up a fuss at the thought of being held by Ocelot, just being held instead of the fooling around they’d been doing earlier, but he didn’t mind so much the object Ocelot used as proxy.

There were several loops around his neck. Most of this was decorative, but - he was particularly aware of those.

Ocelot hadn’t taken his gloves off, no surprise there. But his touches lingered, and at some point he’d taken his hair out of his braid. He had to use some sort of fancy shampoo, Kaz thought irrelevantly. It smelled nice, when it curtained around them both. Fastidious as a goddamn cat. Ocelot grabbed the rope covering Kaz’s arm to keep him very still while he brought - spread - his leg up to his side and started binding it there. Kaz tried to smother the vulnerable little noise of surprise he made by biting his lip, but didn’t entirely succeed. Ocelot ran a hand up his side in what was probably meant to be a soothing gesture. It worked.

The cassette wouldn’t be picking up much of anything. Kaz could understand how that charged silence could mean something to Ocelot. The man always worked in ciphers.

Kaz wasn’t as flexible as he’d used to be (sometimes he had even surprised Snake, although that like anything else was never enough to win), so he ended up partially kneeling. Shivering, he missed the cold, slick contact of the mat against his cock and was a little surprised that he’d managed to keep from mouthing off at Ocelot in frustration. He was allowed to, but - the entire point of this goddamn thing was to get a little peace and quiet, wasn’t it? From himself.

Ocelot made a fist in Kaz’s hair to turn his face to the side and gave him a searching look, before pressing his mouth open with kisses and sucking his tongue into his mouth. And then leaving off, with an almost cloyingly tender kiss on his forehead.

“Damn, Miller. You’re a sight like this.”

Kaz couldn’t imagine himself from outside himself. Didn’t want to. He flexed his fingers and toes, tracked how he could feel his own breathing from the bite of the ropes.

“I’m surprised I never tried this while I still had my pretty face.” And all my limbs, he thought. That went without saying.

Ocelot slapped him. Light enough to barely even sting. “I think I know what I’m doing, Kaz. Don’t insult my work.”

“We’re all right where you want us to be, right?”

“Right now? Everything’s golden. Almost golden.” Ocelot got up and moved away, in the direction of the duffel. Kaz fought down another shiver. “I haven’t got mine yet, and I did say I wasn’t doing this just for you.”

“Good, because I haven’t either, you kinky bastard.”

“You seem to be enjoying yourself. More than you were when you were picking a fight with me.”

“Oh? Let’s have it out, then. Can you even get it up anymore?”

Ocelot chuckled. It was an inane insult - Kaz had felt very well what mood Ocelot was in since he’d first CQC’ed him face-down into the mat. Kaz felt a wet open-mouthed kiss on the small of his back, and broke into shivers again. Kaz was about to ask him if he was going to take his goddamn gloves off when a bare thumb smeared lube over his asshole. Kaz quickly lost the fight to keep some of his dignity by not gasping and whimpering as Ocelot worked him open - it had been a long time, way too damn long and he hadn’t got on his knees anything like this for anyone but Snake before. Ocelot paused and draped himself over Kaz to stuff half his scarf in his mouth.

“To bite down on,” Ocelot said cheerily.

Kaz huffed disagreeably through his nose but did as instructed.

Ocelot slipped his fingers under the rope around his neck like it was a collar, pulling it tight against his skin, his other hand kneading at the plush of Kaz’s ass, and pushed in, slow, in one motion. Kaz made a choked noise half-swallowed by the red scarf he was drooling into, still loud enough almost to drown out Ocelot’s wavering, unsteady exhale with his face pressed against one of Kaz’s shoulders. The most vulnerable Kaz had ever known him. Knowing Snake, maybe more vulnerable than anyone’d -

Kaz was relieved to stop thinking about Snake when Ocelot’s grip tightened further, hand not in the collar going around below him and twining in a bit of rope, and he started moving, rough and deep. Kaz spat out the scarf. “Fffuck, are you going to. To give me a hand, here, or not.”

“Not yet, no,” Ocelot mouthed into his back. “You’re cute when you’re desperate.” He shoved forward particularly hard at just the right angle, and Kaz only got half a curse out while his collar was tugged, maybe unintentionally. Probably not unintentionally. The entire point was that Ocelot knew how to be cruel.

“I’m always cute, asshole.”

Ocelot laughed and rubbed little circles in Kaz’s skin.

Kaz dealt with the sunlight-hot, prickling, electric-cool arousal everywhere under his skin by cursing brokenly at Ocelot in at least three languages. Ocelot’s muted delight at Kaz’s creativity shouldn’t have been as satisfactory as it was while he was fucking Kaz into the concrete. Kaz was pretty sure that, given his complete lack of tail lately, he’d have finished sooner had Ocelot not taken some perverse pleasure in letting Kaz pant and writhe on his cock -

Alright, he could see the appeal and he might not even be mad, once Ocelot lent him a goddamn hand.

He got his wish when Ocelot started to pant raggedly over him. He drew out halfway and turned Kaz back over, kissing Kaz open-mouthed on the throat before dragging them together again, pulling his hand up and down Kaz’s shaft, palming over the head. It wasn’t long before Kaz came, stuttering out Ocelot’s name even if it was bracketed with profanity, and Ocelot followed him over the edge buried in him as Kaz’s vision whited out.

Ocelot stayed in him for a long moment, composing himself, building up his invisible shields again with the care of an architect, pale skin covered all-over with a pink flush.

“Not goddamn bad, Miller,” he said at least.

“Get off me. No, I mean, it wasn’t goddamn bad.” He wasn’t going to thank him.

Ocelot got off him. He hadn’t even taken his boots off. He did up his pants, slipped his gloves back on, and then started methodically untying Kaz, who waved off his help to sit up under his own power, groaning slightly with the all-over wrung-out, bruised feeling.

It didn’t feel so bad at all.

Maybe he’d have to start up doing horribly inadvisable things out from behind his desk, again. Maybe it’d be good for him. At least it would be fun.

For a while there - not fueled only by fun, it couldn’t have been, but abetted by it, God, being young and answerable to no one alive could be fun - it’d been him and another soldier and pushing farther than he should have. You couldn’t go back, but you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks, anyway, so what the hell?

“You know,” Ocelot said, throwing an old towel his way. “It’s been too long since I’ve had a partner to try some new techniques, some old techniques, with.”

John’s absence couldn’t make things right again, but that’s not what war had ever done. That’s not what war was for. Kaz touched the bruise on his throat before putting his scarf around it, and eyed Ocelot, with his steel-blue eyes and knowing smile.


End file.
